The present invention describes a method for the manufacture of aryl-alkyl surfactant precursors from inexpensive starting materials. The invention utilizes an electrolytic decarboxylation process (EDP) to perform the reaction at low temperature without the use of catalysts. The general surfactants manufactured will potentially be used by companies involved with Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), synthetic motor oil, flocculation, mining, paints, coatings, adhesives, industrial applications under extreme conditions of pH and temperature just to mention a few.
More than 50 million pounds of aryl-alkyl sulfonic acid surfactants are widely used for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) and other industrial applications, but they are expensive to manufacture by a traditional process shown below:

As shown above, the current process involves using long chain alpha-alkenes that are expensive, currently ˜$6/gallon, to react with benzene ring in the presence of a catalyst. In the above process, the beta carbon of the long chain alpha-alkene is reactive, resulting is a product having an undesirable methyl side chain.
It would be an advancement in the art to prepare aryl-alkyl surfactant precursors using lower cost starting materials compared to alpha-alkenes. It would also be an advancement in the art to prepare aryl-alkyl surfactant precursors in a process that avoids the producing products having undesirable side chains.